20 Minute Homemade Marinara Sauce

Make a restaurant worthy homemade marinara sauce in just twenty minutes with passata, tomato paste, onion, garlic and basil.

I’ve been on the hunt for the ultimate homemade marinara sauce recipe forever. There are so many recipes out there that call for jars of store-bought marinara sauce and that’s just not something I’m interested in buying. I wanted to perfect a homemade version of marinara sauce similar to the way I perfected my recipe for homemade pizza sauce.

What ingredients do you need for an easy homemade marinara sauce?

This recipe has been years in the making and along the way, I’ve learned that there are a couple of important elements to making the perfect marinara sauce. The first secret has to do with the depth of flavour. I use a combination of tomato paste and passata to get a rich tomato flavour for this sauce. The passata and tomato paste are simmered for twenty minutes to give this sauce an intense tomato flavour.

What is passata?

Passata is a tomato puree made of strained tomatoes. It’s typically used in Italian and European cooking. It has a more intense and ‘clean’ tomato flavour and it also comes in tall glass jars which avoids that “tinny” aftertaste often found in canned tomato products. Passata is also slightly lighter than crushed tomatoes.

The next secret to the perfect homemade marinara sauce comes from the balance of acidity and sweetness. Tomatoes are inherently acidic which means that they require sugar and salt to create balance.

Should you add sugar to tomato sauce?

There are many schools of thought when it comes to homemade tomato sauce. I find that marinara sauce needs to be slightly sweeter than your typical tomato sauce, so I stir my sugar in at the end of the cooking process and taste and adjust as necessary. Always taste your marinara sauce before adding any sugar.

Finally the flavour agents for this sauce are simple; onion and garlic. But not in the way they are typically prepared for tomato sauce, I was inspired by Marcella Hazan’s method for tomato sauce where she simmers a halved onion in her sauce then discards it at the end. This allows the onion to impart subtle flavour into the sauce without it altering the texture or flavour the same way a finely chopped or diced onion would.

My recipe also uses a few smashed cloves of garlic which add flavour during the 20 minute simmering process, but like the onion, are discarded before serving. Not only does it add taste to the sauce, but it keeps prep minimal because all the prep that is required for this sauce is to halve an onion and smash and peel three garlic cloves.

Should I use fresh basil or dried basil for marinara sauce?

The final secret that I will share with you today is to stir in fresh basil. Basil is a more delicate herb which means it should be stirred in at the end of the cooking process.In my house all of our pasta sauces were made with dried herbs because dried thyme and oregano are sturdier herbs that lend themselves to the long simmer of a bolognese sauce.

However, I’ve been doing lots of reading on herbs (I wrote a post for Chatelaine about when to use dried vs. fresh herbs) and figured out that the missing element to my homemade marinara sauce was fresh basil. It adds just enough flavour to brighten the sauce.

This recipe makes 2 cups of sauce, but it can easily be doubled to make more.